


Agonies of Conscience

by LordofLies



Category: Les Miserables, Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Confused Javert, Confused Valjean, Head Injury, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, barricades au, no Seine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 10:04:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2224956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordofLies/pseuds/LordofLies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Javert suffers a head injury during his capture at the barricades, leaving his behavior erratic and Valjean in the uncomfortable position of having to ensure the safety of the one man he would most prefer to leave behind him.</p><p>  <i>Javert buried his head in his hands, his broad shoulders trembling and strangely fragile.</i></p><p>  <i>“You should have killed me,” he groaned. “You talk of mercy and yet you do not think! You have never thought! You do what you think are kindnesses without ever considering the consequences! Your mercy has killed me. I have nothing. I am nothing. You have torn the scales from my eyes, but they are too weak, too used to darkness! They cannot bear the light and I am blinded.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Agonies of Conscience

**Author's Note:**

> For Terra, happy birthday!

Sight returned to Javert like ink bleeding across a page. The world shook and spun and the brightness of it stabbed through his pupils and into his skull. He groaned and closed his eyes. There was a hot, pounding ache in his head that grew worse when he tried to collect his thoughts. He let them go, like ashes in a breeze, and the acute pain faded to a blunt ache. His mouth was dry and sour and tasted faintly of metal.

He could not, for the moment, determine where he was or how he had gotten there, as every time he reached for a memory the ache behind his eyes beat him back into the ground. His arms were bound behind him and he could only slump forward so much before something tightened around his throat and cut off his airflow. He leaned back against whatever surface he was bound to and let his head loll to the side, panting for air and wincing with every breath as his stomach knotted itself up and his head throbbed with such intense pain that he could feel it all the way down to his groin.

Voices echoed inside his skull as he slowly drew the world around him back into focus. He was inside the café, and he was alone.

The sound of a sudden burst of gunfire pierced his mind so violently that it took him several moments to realize that he had not, in fact, been shot. He clenched his teeth to keep from screaming as his head throbbed hotly and the world began to waver again. The shouting and gunfire continued, and Javert, though he was bound and could not move far, tried to curl in on himself and press his shoulders to his ears to block out the sound.

Eventually the noise subsided and the metal spikes that were being forced into Javert’s brain withdrew, leaving a hollow throbbing in their place. He let his head fall to the side and watched through half-lidded eyes as the students began to reenter the building.

The world was a mess and Javert did not no what was going on, but he was not dead yet, so the students must have, for the moment, repelled the National Guard. He watched as they carried the corpse of an old man into the room and laid it on the table beside him. Red blossomed on the man’s white shirt like a grotesque flower, and even after Javert turned his head away, the image of that bloody carnation lay pressed upon his vision. Still trying to gather his wits and understand more than that he was powerless to extricate himself from this situation, Javert cast his cold gaze around the room, seeing the students’ despondent and stricken faces, but feeling nothing but contempt for them.

And then he noticed that one of them was staring at him.

Javert squinted, then jerked his head back violently, narrowly avoiding giving himself another blow to the skull.

The man across the room from him was no child insurgent, it was Jean Valjean! It had been nearly eight years, but Javert could never forget that face, those eyes, that brilliant white hair.

The inspector drew his thin lips back in a snarl, revealing his teeth. His thick whiskers bristled and he allowed rage to fill him like liquid flame; blood which had pumped sluggishly now rushed through his veins like whiskey. Had Javert been a man inclined to drink, he might have felt himself in a drunken fury that this man, this renegade, had the audacity to appear here, of all places, before Javert of all people, at this, of all times! The bitter irony of this reunion flooded his mouth like bile and Javert began to laugh, hoarsely at first but with growing strength.

Javert’s laughter was terrible. It scratched his throat and came out of his mouth in rough, gravelly bursts while whistling breathily from his nose. A strange pleasure filled him as Valjean’s expression changed from shock to horror. Students turned to see what the awful sound was, and grew fearful when they realized it came from the condemned police spy.

It was not a human sound. It was animalistic, fatalist, and chilling. In this hour of torment, grief, and shaken faith, it felt like an omen of death descending upon them.

“Shut him up!” one of them cried. Valjean closed his eyes briefly, then turned to the boy with the blond hair and the red coat. Enjolras, Javert recalled dimly.

“Monsieur, I would ask a favor of you,” he said quietly. Javert let his laughter die like a wounded animal.

“Anything you wish, Monsieur,” the young insurgent replied. “My friends and I owe you our lives.”

“Give me that man over there,” Valjean said, nodding his head towards Javert, “So that I may blow his brains out.”

“He is yours,” Enjolras said, nodding stiffly. “Take him outside and be done with it.”

Javert looked up at Valjean silently; all his laughter had escaped, like steam from a kettle, leaving him cold and hollow. “That is just,” he whispered, looking at Valjean as if he were the only other person in the room. When their eyes met, Javert averted his gaze, lids drooping in defiant resignation. A whirl of emotions were taking place beneath his unperturbed exterior, but the one that rose above all of them was triumph.

Valjean approached him without hesitation and leaned down to untie him from the post. Javert sneered as he was yanked roughly to his feet by the noose around his neck and led out of the café.

“Do not think you will escape my fate,” he called back to the insurgents. “You will follow soon enough!”

He laughed noiselessly through his nose as Valjean tugged him along faster. Javert’s pace was slow, for his bondage hobbled his steps and the ground did not always seem to be where it should be. His head was still throbbing and there was a strange knot in his stomach that he could not name. The city grew darker as they went further from the café, and Javert cast his gaze up. The stars blazed in the night with an unnatural brightness. They seemed to spin, as if Javert was rooted in time and he was watching the passing of the seasons in the paths of the stars across the sky.

It occurred to him that he would never see another summer, would feel neither the chill of rain nor the warmth of the sun ever again. He would die here, in darkness, beneath the fixture of the heavens—his guiding light. This sentiment brought him a strange comfort which he was not aware he had been seeking. He was not afraid of death, for he knew that his life had been long and justly lived. He’d chosen for himself a purpose and had fulfilled it to the best of his abilities. He had never faltered, he had never submitted, and even this impending doom was not a submission, but a victory. He may never have been able to bring Valjean to justice, but the convict would surely die when the barricades fell, and in doing this—in killing Javert—he confirmed all that Javert had always known about the nature of men, and righted all that Valjean had twisted by assuming the identity of Madeleine, of ever daring to play Javert’s superior.

At last this false saint, this convict who had dared to upset the balance of authority, who had evaded justice all this time, finally revealed his true colors! The wolf at last cast off his sheep’s skin! There would be no more lies between them now, no more falsehoods, and no more misunderstandings. It was just Javert, the agent of the law, and Valjean, the convict and thief, claiming another’s life for himself.

There was a strange, exhilarating intimacy in this truth. They were, in a sense, naked beneath each other’s gaze. The thought brought a strange flush to Javert’s face.

Once they were out of sight of the café, Valjean pushed Javert up against a wall by the collar. Javert sneered at him, though the expression did not come out quite as he intended, and to Valjean it appeared less a look of contempt than one of disgust.

“Do it then,” Javert spat, eyes glinting darkly. Valjean’s face seemed to come in and out of focus. Only the cold brick against his bound hands felt real. Clammy perspiration clung to his forehead and there was an incessant ringing in his ears. He felt his knees weaken but leaned back against the wall rather than fall, despite the pain it brought to his wrists.

Valjean stuck the barrel of the gun into his belt and pulled out a knife.

“A blade!” Javert exclaimed. “You’re right, that does suit you better.” He felt gravity press down on him again and, in an effort to remain standing, attempted to spread his legs and tilt his chin up defiantly. As his ankles were bound and he was unable to bring them more than a foot apart, the end result was that he spread his knees and sank further down the wall, head lolling to the side.

“You’ve hungered for this all your life,” Javert hissed.

Valjean hesitated, knife trembling in his grip, as a hot flush crept up his cheeks.

“Javert,” he choked out, “Are you well?”

Javert glared at him in confusion and finally lost the battle he was waging against gravity. He sank to the ground, wrists scraping against the brick, and hit the damp stones hard. The ringing sound in his ears was blotting out everything, and he shook his head in attempt to clear it.

“Javert,” Valjean said softly, too softly, with something too much like concern in his voice. Javert snapped his head back up, snarling despite the pain. If his hands had been unbound he would have grabbed Valjean by the collar and… and what? He did not know.

“Do it, Valjean, damn you! Kill me already! Take your revenge and then go die with your insurgent friends! We are neither of us long for this world!”

Cautiously, Valjean knelt on the ground before him, almost between his parted thighs, and leaned forward. Javert closed his eyes, and felt something cold touch the flesh of his throat while at the same time something warm and soft brushed against his sweaty brow.

“You talk too much,” Valjean murmured.

There was a slight pressure, and then something gave way. Javert opened his eyes to see Valjean drawing back. Bewildered, he looked down to see the rope falling away from his neck. It had been cut.

“Your life is safe in my hands,” Valjean said softly, before licking the salt from his lips.

Javert shuddered and watched in a stupefied paralysis as Valjean leaned down again and cut the rope that bound Javert’s feet together, then bent him forward so that he could reach the ties around his wrists. Valjean pulled those away, frowning to see that they were stained with Javert’s blood.

“You have injured yourself.”

It was the last straw.

“What have you done!?” Javert roared, breaking free of his paralysis and surging forward, hands free and grasping for Valjean’s neck. Valjean gasped, dropping the knife as Javert’s large hands closed around his throat. Javert squeezed, snarling, but Valjean did not struggle and kick and strike him like he’d wanted. No, Valjean could not even give Javert that satisfaction. Instead he fisted trembling hands in the front of Javert’s shirt and let himself sink to the ground.

“Javert… please…” he gasped out. Horrified and bewildered, Javert released him, and leaned back against the wall for support, panting and wild. Valjean coughed violently, massaging his throat and looking up at Javert with an expression of unfathomable compassion. There were dark red imprints on his throat from where Javert’s fingers had pressed into his flesh—determined to strangle the life out of him. Surely, they would be bruises by morning.

“Damn you,” Javert whispered. A wave of hatred, hot and cloying, flowed up through him and clogged his mouth and nose. It was hard to breathe, hard to see. “Damn you, damn you, damn you! You and your charity! Your compassion! You are a…a…thief! Damn…Madeleine! Always said… I said… damn…” He pressed a hand to his temple and dug his fingers into his scalp, feeling crusts of dried blood come up under his fingernails.

Valjean rose shakily to his feet, concerned but reluctant to approach. “Javert, you are not well. Please, get out of here. We do not have much time, you must get to safety!”

Javert ran his fingers through his hair, loosening it from its queue so that it fell in dark strands around his ears and eyes. Harsh, wheezing laughter issued from his mouth. He felt as if he had gone mad. Nothing made sense. All he understood was the anger that was threatening to burn him up from the inside out, and all he knew was that a grave injustice had been committed. Nothing made sense anymore!

“Do not think this will earn you a reprieve!” Javert hissed. “You are still a criminal, and if you let me go here, then I will still hunt you down, and you will come to justice! Kill me here, rather! Save us both the trouble!”

Valjean shook his head. “I will not. You are free, Javert! I give you back your life, just as a man who had every reason to despise me once gave me back mine. And it is yours, to do with what you will. You owe me nothing, and I fully expect you to uphold your promise. If I survive this, you can find me at the Rue de l’Homme Armé, number seven.”

“You madden me,” Javert whispered, crushed beneath the weight of his uncertainties and confusion. Valjean simply gestured towards the alley, and, reluctantly, Javert struggled to his feet and began to walk unsteadily away. When he reached the mouth of the alley he paused and turned around.

“Shoot me already!” he cried, in a last effort at righting this world turned on its head. Valjean waved him away, hissing “go!”, and after Javert had finally ventured out of sight, he heard a single shot and then silence.

Stupefied, his mind reeling, Javert staggered away from the barricade and the maddening Madeleine…

Madeleine? No, Valjean. Madeleine was not real, he reminded himself, though the words did not hold the truth that they once had.

Was it not the old mayor of Montreuil that he had seen in those warm hazel eyes? The soft lips that had asked him if he was hurt as gently as if he had been a child, those lips that had touched his brow…why? A benediction? A reassurance? He did not understand. He felt the heat of a fever wash over him, and at the same time a cold chill gripped his bones. Dizziness swept over him and he put a hand against the wall to steady himself.

A fiacre. He should find a fiacre… He should return to the prefecture, let them know that he was alive, tell them what he could about the insurgents, ensure that they would fall, that Valjean would fall…

Javert did not know how long he had been walking, but there were no fiacres about this night, and finally he came to a sheltered bit of alley, tucked out of the way but with a good sight of the river afforded to it. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, intending to catch his breath for a moment before continuing on. There must be an office somewhere nearby…he was sure of it.

Groaning, Javert slumped against the ground and cast his gaze up at the open sky above the river. The lamps were out but there seemed to be bright lights all around him, as if the very stars in the firmament had fallen to earth.

It did not seem strange to him. After all, the world he knew was already crashing down around him. He was only puzzled that the heat of them did not burn or even warm him. He was cold, and he wondered if the stars were as well—burning not like fire, but like ice. He could still feel the press of Valjean’s lips on his brow. Everything was distorted and unclear save the light cast upon him by those green eyes. They pierced him as surely as the blade which had severed his bonds instead of the thread of his life. It had all gone so, so wrong.

A wave of intense nausea swept over Javert, and he leaned over just in time to avoid soiling his clothes as he vomited up the contents of his stomach. He shuddered at the disgusting feeling, and spat upon the stones. His limbs were heavy and his mind felt like cotton. Exhaustion weighed his eyelids down like lead, and he managed to edge himself away from the puddle of his own sick enough so that he would not fall in it as he felt unconsciousness creeping up on him. What a sight he must look, asleep in an alley in his own vomit like some poor, drunk bastard. No one would mistake him for the proud and irreproachable inspector. _How could they,_ he thought bitterly as the lights went out and darkness covered him, _when I do not even recognize myself_?

\- o -

When Javert woke, it was to the bloody red glow of sunset on the Seine. His mouth was dry and tasted of vomit, and there was still an incessant ringing in his ears. As he squinted against the brightness of the evening, he realized that, since it had been night when he collapsed, he must have spent the entire day unconscious in this alley. Anything might have happened in that time. The barricades must have fallen by now, surely, and he still had to find Valjean…

Sucking in a great gulp of air, Javert propped himself up on his hands and struggled to rise, leaning on the wall for support and gripping at the brick with his hands. He was dizzy and disoriented, and he took a moment to gather himself before turning to look back at the river. If he continued alongside it, he would be more likely to run into a fiacre that could take him to the nearest police station. Putting all his effort into maintaining his upright position, Javert detached himself from the wall and began to walk towards the street.

As he approached the road, he noticed a figure dart along the riverbank, dressed in rags. A cold clarity swept over him at the sight of that figure. It was one he recognized—that rat of a man, Thenardier! He had managed to escape his imprisonment along with several other members of the Patron-Minette gang, and Javert’s role as a police inspector forced him to acknowledge that arresting this man was of greater importance than determining the fate of Jean Valjean.

He had, for the moment, forgotten that he was neither dressed in uniform, nor in possession of any weapons or means of securing a criminal once apprehended.

Javert followed Thenardier along the bank until the little man slipped into a sewer grate. Javert tugged on the door of it and found it locked. The damned con had a key!

Resigning himself to the long game, Javert returned to the street, hailed the first passing fiacre, and—as he was still in possession of his money and police identification—instructed the driver to wait there until Javert was ready to call upon him. After this he slipped back down to the bank and waited in the shadows for the escaped convict to return, counting the stars one at a time as they twinkled into being in the darkening Parisian sky.

\- o -

It was several hours before the grate swung open with a creak, but Javert was awake and ready. The night had been a struggle against the ache in his head, the ringing in his ears, and the nausea in his gut which was exacerbated by the stench of the river, but he had endured.

It was not, however, the wiry form of Thenardier that emerged from the sewer, but a great hulking man with a seemingly dead body swung over his shoulder. Javert stepped forward.

“Halt! Identify yourself!” he barked. The man who had emerged from the sewer froze.

“Javert?” he said in a soft, disbelieving whisper.

“Identify yourself!” Javert repeated.

“It is I,” the stranger said quietly, “Jean Valjean.”

Filled with a furious fire at this most bitter of all ironies, Javert approached the man and seized him by the collar, bringing their faces so close that their noses were almost touching, and examined his visage with an intense ferocity.

It was indeed Jean Valjean.

“Valjean!” Javert spat, “You will come with me, so that I may return you to your proper place!”

A strong hand gripped him and pried his fingers loose.

“I will go with you,” Valjean said slowly, “But I must first ask of you a favor. This boy is gravely injured, and I must return him to his family so that his life may be saved. I beg of you, grant me this one thing and I will not resist you.”

Javert blinked, stunned for a moment, and then began to laugh his wheezing, whistling laugh.

“Saint Madeleine, back from the grave again! You are a riddle to me! You are impossible! You will not escape me again! No, not this time! We will end this now, Valjean.” He grabbed at Valjean’s coat, but Valjean again grabbed his wrist and removed his hand.

“Javert, please, this boy has done no wrong. He is innocent; he is a child! You are right to condemn me, to arrest me, but please, let me save him—grant him the gift of a future!”

Javert shook his head angrily, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead.

“You dare to talk of innocence? Of futures? To agree with me and defy me in one breath? You infuriate me! The convict saint! How can a man be just and unjust at once? You drive me…ugh.” He groaned, squeezing his skull and trying to block out the ringing whine, trying almost in vain just to remain standing. He swayed where he stood, and the world drained out of focus. Valjean’s face drifted in front of him, tormenting him.

“Javert? Javert, what is wrong with you?” Valjean asked, becoming agitated as the police spy did not respond. Instead, his eyes drooped and he began to collapse slowly. Valjean lurched forward just as Javert’s legs buckled, and with a grunt, managed to catch him around the waist before he could fall into the mud entirely.

“Javert! Javert, awaken!” he cried, straining under his double burden. Javert squinted, eyes fluttering open.

“Monsieur le Maire?” he asked, his voice small and oddly confused. Valjean was at a loss. Javert had clearly been injured badly. His mind was addled, which boded ill for all of them. He could feel time draining away like river water through his parted fingers.

“No, Javert. It is Valjean. Please, recover your senses! We must make haste!” Javert let his gaze drift toward the boy on Valjean’s back. There was dried blood smeared down his face and across his throat and his black hair was plastered to his skull with blood and sewage. He looked little more than a corpse.

“Fine,” Javert whispered. He struggled to his feet, using Valjean for support, and glanced up at the road. “I have a fiacre waiting. What is the address?”

“Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number four,” Valjean said quickly.

“Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number… rue des feuilles-du-Cal… rue des…des…” He grimaced. The words peeled from his mind like wet paper, falling to pieces as he tried to seize them.

“I will instruct the driver,” Valjean assured him. Javert bowed his head, and the two men and their burden made their way to the fiacre. Javert climbed into the small carriage as if in a dream, or perhaps more like a nightmare.

He was confused, furious, exhausted, and felt sick as a dog. His mind sloshed about like a soup of memories and emotions which he could neither sort nor control, and which at times spilled out of him unbidden and unfiltered. He watched Valjean climb into the seat opposite him and prop the nearly dead boy next to him. His head seemed large and fragile on his wet and skinny frame, and it rested against Valjean’s shoulder like an egg. It looked as if a single jolt could smash it.

The carriage ride was short and uncomfortable. Javert found himself tossed about like a doll in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. Valjean sat just across from him! The convict he had vowed to bring to justice was just within his grasp! Time and time again he wished to fling himself upon that maddening man, to devour him as though Javert were a tiger and Valjean his prey! If he had been in his right mind, he would have attributed these urges solely to his desire to see justice done—this devouring as the act of a policeman arresting a criminal, the end of the hunt, a victory. But in this phantasmal unreality in which Javert now existed, where he found himself yielding to the demands of a convict, where a convict let him go free when he had every right and reason to end his life, he found that he could not explain away the gut-deep carnality of his desires.

In a moment of madness, as he told himself it was, his desires to claim victory over this man became a very different kind of struggle. He longed to throw himself upon Valjean and sink his teeth into his throat, grasp at his back and rake his nails down those broad shoulders, knock their teeth together, press his hips up against Valjean’s and feel that powerful physique go limp in submission beneath him. His cheeks flushed at the sheer impropriety of these uncommon thoughts, but the ache in his mind ebbed a fraction as some of the blood in his head rushed south and became a different ache entirely.

The ride was short, but it felt like an eternity. When they arrived at number four, Valjean picked up the boy and climbed out of the carriage. Javert attempted to follow him, but vertigo took him and he slumped back into his seat, eyes rolling and mind spinning.

“Stay here, please, Javert,” Valjean said. “I will return.”

Javert said nothing and gave no sign of acknowledgement. Whether Valjean interpreted his silence as acquiescence or incomprehension, he did not know, but the old convict left the fiacre and made his way to the house. After a moment, he entered, and soon after that he reemerged. Javert watched him travel down the path back to the fiacre, relieved of his original burden, and Javert expected that at any moment the man would turn away and bolt into the night, so as to relieve himself of his second.

When Jean Valjean climbed back into the carriage and sat opposite Javert again, the inspector found himself stunned—even more confused than before, but less wrathful.

Valjean wrung his hands and glanced at Javert nervously.

“If I may…” he began, then hung his head. “Before you arrest me, would you allow me to return to my lodgings, so that I may set my things in order? If I were unable to do that, my daughter would be left all alone, she would not know what became of me, she would have nothing. I beg you…”

Javert snorted dismissively, silencing Valjean, then leaned his head out the window of the fiacre and called to the driver, “Rue de l’Homme Armé, number seven!”

Valjean stared at him in shock, and it brought a twinge of satisfaction to him that he had surprised the man that continually surprised him. _Let us both be enigmas to each other!_ He thought viciously. How this man confounded him! He was a convict, a thief, an outlaw! And yet he was a philanthropist, naively concerned with saving those who had gotten themselves into trouble, who would protect prostitutes and insurgents from the law and raise an orphaned child as his own when his only connection to the mother was that of a benefactor to one in need! He was a liar, and yet he kept his word! He had the opportunity to escape, and he chose not to take it! This, above all, Javert could not understand.

He could perhaps understand Valjean’s reluctance to kill him—many criminals were too cowardly to murder, even if they were thieves—but to relinquish his best opportunity to evade imprisonment? Javert was in no state to pursue. If he had run, Javert would not have been able to stop him. Even now, he could easily incapacitate Javert or overpower him, but instead he chose to submit, to request favors of him, to leave Javert with the paper-thin impression that he was still in control! It was ludicrous, infuriating, incomprehensible!

Javert’s mind ached and fermented while his body refused to obey him, feeling hot and then cold, limbs refusing to responding the way he wanted them to, all the strength drained out of him—like a bled animal ready for the butcher’s block.

Valjean could take him apart on a whim if he so desired, and yet he did not—a wolf tamed by the fortitude of his own conscience. Was it possible, then, for a criminal to have a conscience? To deviate from the path of lawfulness, only to realize that such a deviation was a mistake? To repent? To reform? To become genuine and honest while at the same time existing outside the law?

Javert’s world, which had been simple and easily navigated his entire life, had ceased to be so. Instead of a path, he saw a labyrinth. And as the exterior world by which he defined himself crumbled and warped around him, so did his inner self. As the world ceased to become simple, so did Javert, and it overwhelmed him. He felt as if he were drowning, and he sought desperately for something to cling to which would numb these agonies of conscience which seized him in fits and made him a victim of his own mind.

He longed to reach out to Valjean, to shake him apart in his fury and to cling to him like a life raft. The convict Jean Valjean and the gentle, quiet Madeleine began to blur together in his mind, superimposed upon each other, creating a single whole which could not be and yet somehow was. He was lost and longed for direction. He had never been in a position where a superior authority could provide no guidance to him. Oh, how he wished for that guidance, for the ease of submission to a superior, for the surety and conviction of obeying order, rather than the agony of this spiritual anarchy!

If only the man sitting across from him were Madeleine! If only Madeleine had been real! The dog inside Javert, despite all reason, still recognized Valjean as his master, while at the same time the wolf in him saw Valjean the convict, his prey. Javert was a man torn in two, between duty and conscience, law and mercy. The wall he’d walked along his whole life—the wall that separated the lawless from the lawful—was crumbling beneath him and if there was no one to catch him, Javert knew that he would be crushed beneath the rubble of his collapsing soul.

“Javert?”

Javert looked up and found Valjean’s face mere inches from his own. Somehow, he had cast himself forward, over the gap between them, and gripped the front of Valjean’s shirt in his hands. There was fear in those green eyes—fear, confusion, and an old grief. This was a man weighed down by loss and sadness, who had so many reasons to hate, and yet there was no hatred to be found in that gaze. But there was no compassion there either, not right now, and Javert was glad of that, because he could not have borne this man’s compassion—not now, when he was so undeserving of it, when it set his stomach boiling with rage.

“Tell me,” Javert said, casting his eyes down so that he would not be able to feel the burn of Valjean’s gaze so hotly, “What I should do.”

“What?” Valjean asked, stunned.

“You were my superior once, in the eyes of the law; now I see that you are again my superior, this time in conscience.” He closed his eyes, mind reeling. “So please, tell me what I should do.”

“Javert,” Valjean said gently, as though he were talking to a child, “I do not understand.” Javert’s grip tightened.

“You saved my life and have proven yourself a man of integrity, and for that I cannot in good conscience return you to prison, but you are wanted by the law of which I am an agent, and I cannot let you walk free without transgressing it myself. I do not know what to do, so therefore I am asking you. How can I act without sacrificing either my honor or my soul?” he demanded, still not daring to look Valjean in the face.

“Javert… You are unwell,” Valjean said carefully. “I do not think that you want my opinion in this matter, and even if I believed that you did, I would not know what to tell you. I am no authority on issues of morality. I did wrong once, and I have since tried to right it by being the best man I can. My path has never been a straight one. I cannot make this decision for you, it is not my place. Certainly, I do not wish to go to prison, but I will not resist you, whatever you decide…”

At these words, Javert felt all his will, all his strength, and all his anger slip away from him like a shed skin. His knees trembled and gave way, and he found himself kneeling on the narrow floor of the fiacre, between Valjean’s knees. The hands which had been fisted in Valjean’s shirt went slack and slipped down to rest flat against his stomach—taut and trembling at this unexpected action. Without anger and conviction, all there remained of Javert’s touch was uncertainty and a strange longing.

“I…” Javert started, before the last of his strength gave way. He slumped forward and let his head fall into Valjean’s lap.

“Javert? Javert?” Valjean cried, his hands hovering over the inspector’s shoulders, wanting to push him upright but reluctant to touch him voluntarily. Javert did not hear him. He was drowning in the black ocean of his mind, ears clogged with tar and limbs draped in a dead weight at Valjean’s sides. He was aware of an attractive warmth coupled with a repulsive smell—the lingering stink of the sewage that Valjean had waded through to bring that boy to safety. Beneath the refuse of Paris he could smell Valjean, earthy, robust, and oddly comforting. It reminded him of years ago, when the world was in its right place, and gave him an odd sense of security in this terrifying black limbo of mental and spiritual uncertainty.

“Javert!” Valjean gasped, clenching his hovering hands into fists as the inspector moved his head and groaned, rubbing and nuzzling at Valjean’s crotch. “Javert, you are not thinking! Please stop this, please, get up, what… ah…” his protestations trailed off into a groan as he felt himself growing hard beneath Javert’s unexpected ministrations.

Javert murmured something unintelligible, and Valjean at last found the courage to grip the man’s shoulders and return him to an upright position—though he did not remain there. He slumped to the side in his seat, senseless. Valjean panted, running a hand through his white hair—filthy with effluvia—and contemplated his course of action.

\- o -

When Javert woke once more, it was not against the hard stones of the street, but in the warm embrace of a bed. It was not his bed, and the room was one he did not recognize. He struggled to sit upright, wincing as he became aware of the battering his body had endured over the past few days. He touched his head and felt that not only was his hair clean, but his head had been bandaged in fresh linens. He was dressed in clothing free of blood and filth. Someone had cleaned and dressed him while he slept, and with a growing sense of dread he began to realize who the most likely culprit was.

No sooner had this dawned upon him, than Jean Valjean entered the room.

“You’re awake!” he exclaimed, looking startled and uncertain. He shut the door behind him but remained close by it, perhaps so that he would be able to flee at a moment’s notice. He behaved like a startled animal around Javert—the hare in the presence of the hound.

“You suffered a blow to the skull, I can only assume it was during your capture,” Valjean continued, eyeing Javert warily and gauging his reaction. “I called a doctor, though I had to assure him that you were police, and he would not be arrested for assisting you. He said that further agitation could have resulted in irreparable damage, and that you should rest for a few days at least.”

Javert said nothing, and Valjean paused, visibly uncomfortable. He rocked back on his heels.

“Do you remember anything?”

Javert’s eyes met his, and Valjean froze as if he had been struck by lightning.

“I remember you climbing out of a sewer with a corpse on your back, and my allowing you to deliver it to its family. I remember a carriage. I remember…” He paused, a faint flush tinting his ears that could have been rage or embarrassment.

“You freed me.”

“Yes.”

“You did not run.”

“No.”

“You kissed me.”

Valjean paled.

“Y-yes.”

“Why?”

“Why did I kiss you?” Valjean asked, his fingers twisted up in the material of his trousers.

“Why everything. Why let me live? Why deny yourself a perfect opportunity to escape? Why do you not hate me?” _Why are you so gentle? Why can’t I understand you?_

“I have never hated you. You were only doing your duty, you were not in the wrong. I let you go because it was not right to kill you, and I am not that man. And I chose not to run because I am tired of running.” He cast his gaze to the floor. “I have been running for long enough. I am tired of the uncertainty and the fear. I am tired of bearing false names, of pretending to be someone I am not. I am Jean Valjean, nothing more and nothing less, and I would be known by that name once more, even if it must be upon my grave,” he finished quietly.

Javert bowed forward in his bed, hands resting in his lap and his dark hair falling around his face like a curtain, obscuring his face from view.

“Javert?” Valjean asked tentatively. “If you would like to arrest me now, I am ready. I have written a letter to Cosette explaining everything, and I can leave it with our housekeeper when we leave.”

“Shut up,” Javert hissed.

“What?”

“I said shut up!” the inspector cried, whipping his head towards Valjean, his hair in disarray and his eyes dark and wild. “You are impossible! How can you say such things? How can you turn everything I have ever known to be real inside out? You would pluck the very stars from the sky and call them false, and it would be made true by your uttering it! You are a demon! You angel! My own trial, sent to test me, and I have failed!”

He buried his head in his hands, his broad shoulders trembling and strangely fragile.

“You should have killed me,” he groaned. “You talk of mercy and yet you do not think! You have never thought! You do what you think are kindnesses without ever considering the consequences! Your mercy has killed me. I have nothing. I am nothing. You have torn the scales from my eyes, but they are too weak, too used to darkness! They cannot bear the light and I am blinded.”

“Javert, I do not understand,” Valjean said, concern for the other man’s wellbeing beginning to override his fear. He took a step forward.

“Kill me.”

Valjean blanched.

“Good God, Javert! I told you that you are safe with me! I could never…”

“I said kill me, you devil!” Javert snarled, his whiskers bristling, his face savage. “It is the least you could do, to finish what you started!”

In that moment, Valjean recognized himself in Javert. He saw the wretch in the light of God, standing upon the precipice—heaven above, the void below. He saw himself weeping in the fields, a stolen coin clutched in his palm, realizing that he would be consumed by his own hatred if he did not change into someone better, someone selfless and kind. His own epiphany had nearly undone him, but in that undoing he had found the light of transfiguration. He had made a new man of himself and trod the higher path.

Javert, he could see, would let himself fall if given the chance. He could see no path heavenward—only the plunge. He would die rather than accept change into himself.

The good bishop had served as Valjean’s guide on his own path to redemption, but there was no bishop here in this room—only two men, both as damaged by the world as they had proved damaging to each other. Valjean was no saint, but Javert’s words had rung true in one respect—it was Valjean who had catalyzed Javert’s spiritual metamorphosis, and that made him responsible for the man’s wellbeing as he suffered the agonies of his moral rebirth.

“I will not kill you,” Valjean said, moving forward so that he stood beside the bed. “Your death will not right the world, and neither will it end your torment. This is something you must endure, though it may seem impossible now. I am not unfamiliar with your crisis—love was once unfathomable to me as well.”

“Is that why you did it? Because of love?” Javert whispered, incredulous.

“Love for humanity,” Valjean explained. “Recognizing that every man is indeed a man, and every woman and child also—that we are all human beings and we all deserve love and compassion from one another. Love propagates, it blooms, it makes a garden of this world.”

“And the kiss? Was that common love as well?” Valjean cast his gaze heavenward.

“I will admit it was not. I do not know what came over me, I am afraid. I apologize.”

Javert recalled the carriage ride, the heat in his blood, his untoward desires to feel this man against him in ways he had never before fathomed. He wetted his lips.

“Do not.”

“What?”

“Do not apologize. You are not in the wrong. It is I who should apologize.”

“For what?”

“For this.”

Javert grasped the collar of Valjean’s shirt and dragged him down, slamming their lips together in a bruising kiss, teeth knocking together in his haste. Valjean fell down against the bed, leaning his elbows against the edge for support. Javert drew back to scrutinize the other man, who was breathing heavily, eyes wide with shock.

“Ja—” he began, then stopped, licking his swollen lips. Cautiously, he nudged his head forward, seeking out Javert’s mouth as the inspector’s fingers slackened their grip on his raiment. Javert allowed himself to be drawn into a gentle kiss, very different from the first. Valjean licked hesitantly at Javert’s lips, as though asking permission. Javert opened his mouth to return the kiss, letting himself slowly sink back into the mattress as Valjean leaned over him, bracketing him with his strong arms.

As Valjean loomed over him, Javert could see dark bruises around the man’s throat, and the realization that he had been the one to put those marks there struck him like a knife to the gut. He had hurt and tormented and hunted this man—this man who had only ever tried to help others, who had never been anything but genuine and cordial with Javert, who had never raised a hand against him! He was forced to realize that all he had believed about this man was false, and all the things Valjean had said—which he had always believed to be lies—were in fact, truths. What a fool he had been! Cruel and willfully blind! Hot tears leaked from the corners of his eyes and into his whiskers.

“I am damned,” he whispered, looking up into Valjean’s green eyes. He was drunk on them, consumed—they ate away at him like absinthe.

“No,” said Valjean, kissing his brow and smoothing his hair back across his head. “You are saved.”

\- o -

**Author's Note:**

> I tried.


End file.
